Done at Last

It's late at night, and the day is finally over. We went to Tucson to finish the Christmas shopping. What a mess! Road construction, one of which forced us to get rerouted and consequently driving around in circles for a while until we finally got around it; two accidents, blocking all but one lane of the roads we were on, and in general bumper to bumper traffic and crazy drivers running red lights and cutting in and out of traffic. We tried going to the mall, but it was so jam packed and so noisy we got out of there without even walking into a single store. We avoided the malls after that and just went to the smaller stores. Target, Michaels, the Catholic bookstore, Costco, and Trader Joe's, where we bought 16 boxes of truffles, one for each of our coworkers, and I got a jar of chocolate-covered raisins for my hairdresser. Costco was nearly as bad as the mall, but I needed the king sized bags of baking supplies and other things. It was heavily overcast and raining off and on, and we both ended up with tremendous headaches, but we finished all the gift shopping and got it and ourselves safely home at nearly nine o'clock tonight, with a renewed sense of appreciation for living in a small town in a rural area. Then we had to keep the girls out of the bags until we could get the gifts secured. (Only partially successful on that one.) Then time for a shower and now to try to relax a bit before sleep...at least the shopping's done now.

It's been a struggle to try to get any knitting done the last few days. I baked cookies all Sunday afternoon for the local children's Christmas party, and dropped them off this morning on our way out of town. I am trying to finish up the Isis Wrap. The right front is joined to the back now, but it's too late and I'm too tired to try to do more tonight. I was disappointed when I finished the Ribbed Shrug and had most of the third ball of yarn left over. I only needed it for the last five inches. So I cast on for another "Live Dangerously" hat, and worked on that a bit today. It is also apparent that I will have a good amount of the Cascade 220 yarn left over once the Isis Wrap is done, so I will probably make a hat to go with that, too. It seems like I learned to make hats just in time!